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“Oxford IX” International Symposium on Archaeoastronomy
Proceedings IAU Symposium No. 278, 2011 c International Astronomical Union 2011
Clive L. N. Ruggles, ed. doi:10.1017/S1743921311012774
Astronomy and culture in
Late Babylonian Uruk†
John M. Steele
Department of Egyptology and Ancient Western Asian Studies,
Brown University, Box 1899, Providence, RI 02912, USA
email: john steele@brown.edu
Abstract. This article presents three case studies of the role of astronomy within the culture
of Late Babylonian Uruk. I argue that in order to fully understand Babylonian astronomy it is
necessary to combine technical study of astronomical cuneiform texts with wider cultural study
of Babylonian scholarship, archival practice and society.
Keywords. astrology, astral medicine, calendar, Uruk
1. Introduction
The initial decipherment of astronomical cuneiform tablets from Babylonia in the late
nineteenth century quickly led to the realisation that during the so-called Late Babylonian
period (ca. 750 BC to AD 100) the people of ancient Mesopotamia developed a complex
and multi-faceted astronomy that encompassed the precise observation of astronomical
phenomena and their regular recording, the use of empirical methods for predicting future
astronomical events, and the development of mathematical theories of the motion of
the sun, moon and five planets (Hunger & Pingree 1999, Steele 2008). Major advances
in our understanding of Babylonian astronomy were made throughout the twentieth
century by scholars such as F. X. Kugler, O. Neugebauer, A. Sachs, and A. Aaboe.
We are now in a position where large parts of Babylonian astronomy—in particular the
mathematical astronomy and the reports of astronomical observations contained in the
so-called Astronomical Diaries and related texts (Sachs & Hunger 1988–2006)—are well
understood, at least on a technical level. Much work remains to be done on other aspects
of Babylonian astronomy, however, and many astronomical cuneiform tablets remain
unstudied in museum collections.
Most research on Babylonia astronomy during the twentieth century was focused, as
it had to be, on developing an understanding of the astronomical terminology found in
cuneiform texts, the technical analysis and reconstruction of Babylonian mathematical
astronomy, and the editing of primary source material. Until this work had been done,
it was not possible to address wider contextual questions about Babylonian astronomy
such as its uses, place in society, and relationship with other aspects of Babylonian schol-
arship. Furthermore, the available sources material for studying Babylonian astronomy
largely came from collections without archaeological provenance. Many of the known as-
tronomical cuneiform tablets were to be found in purchased collections, bought during the
nineteenth century by the major western museums from antiquities dealers in the Middle
East. Other tablets came from unscientific excavations where the findspots of tablets
were not recorded or were lost during museum registration of the tablets (Steele 2010).
It was therefore not possible to ask questions about the archival contexts of astronomical
† Invited keynote lecture at Main Conference
331
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tablets, or to look at issues such as regional variations within Babylonian astronomy (for
an exception, see Neugebauer’s work on the texts of mathematical astronomy in which
he is able, on the basis of colophons, to establish certain traits of tablets that come from
the cities Babylon and Uruk (Neugebauer 1955)).
The last few years have seen a shift within the study of Babylonian astronomy, indeed
within the study of Babylonian scholarship more generally. More recent, scientific exca-
vations of sites within Mesopotamia, in particular the German excavations at Babylon,
Uruk and Assur, have provided researchers with scholarly tablets that have an archival
context. In addition, research on the collection and registration practices of museums
have allowed some information about the provenance of purchased and unscientifically
excavated tablets to be reconstructed (e.g. Reade 1986, Pedersen 2005). Coupled with the
study of the colophons preserved on tablets, significant progress has been made in under-
standing the networks of scholars working on astronomical and other scholarly topics in
ancient Babylonia (e.g. Rochberg 2000, Robson 2008, Clancier 2009, Ossendrijver 2010).
These types of studies have been assisted by a now common policy of the publication of
excavated cuneiform tablets by findspot rather than by genre as used to be the norm.
In the following I investigate the role of astronomy within the culture of the city of
Uruk in southern Babylonia during the Late Babylonian period. My approach will be to
undertake three case studies to illustrate some of the different uses and social contexts of
astronomy: the calendar, astral medicine and astrology. It should be pointed out straight
away, however, that these are only some of the uses and contexts that astronomy had
in Uruk and we cannot always generalise from the interests of a particular scribe to
the astronomical community as a whole, nor from Uruk to the rest of Babylonia. Uruk is
particularly well suited to asking these types of questions for two reasons, however. First,
Uruk was the site of detailed and productive archaeological excavations conducted by
the Deutsche Orient-Gesellshaft over many seasons during the twentieth century. These
excavations resulted in the discovery of several scholarly archives from both temples
and private dwellings within the city (Hunger 1976, Van Dijk & Mayer 1980, von Weiher
1983–1998). Secondly, the scribes of Uruk frequently included detailed colophons on their
tablets, often including information on the owner of the tablet and his occupation and
lineage, the scribe of the tablet and his occupation and lineage if the scribe and the owner
were not the same person, the date on which a tablet was copied, and sometimes also
details on where the tablet had been copied from and whether the tablet was part of a
temple archive.
2. The city of Uruk in the Late Babylonian period
The city of Uruk was located on the north bank of the river Euphrates in south-
ern Babylonia (Fig. 1). One of the oldest sites in Mesopotamia, the city was occupied
continuously from the fourth millennium BC down to (at least) the last century BC.
Throughout this period, the city acted as a major cultic, cultural and ideological centre,
although politically after the third millennium BC the city was always overshadowed by
cities in central and northern Mesopotamia, in particular Assur and Nineveh in Assyria
and Babylon in Babylonia. The city went through considerable change over the first
millennium BC including significant decline during the period of Achaemenid Persian
rule of Babylonia (sixth to fourth century BC) followed by rapid regrowth during the
subsequent period of Seleucid Greek and Parthian rule (late fourth to first century BC).
The city of Uruk was enclosed by a perimeter wall delineating an area of about 2.5 by
3km (Jordan 1928). Close to the centre of the city were three major temple buildings:
the Eanna temple, the Irigal Temple and the Bit-Reš sanctuary (Downey 1988: 15–47).
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Figure 1. Map showing the major cities in Mesopotamia during the Late Babylonian period.
Surrounding this central area we find residential streets, smaller temples and other civic
buildings (Fig. 2). Cuneiform tablets have been excavated from several sites in the city
including major finds within the Eanna temple, the Bit-Reš and a private house in the
residential area to the southwest of the Eanna (Pedersen 1998: 204–213).
Several hundred astronomical cuneiform tablets are known from Uruk. These tablets
can be divided into three groups based upon the manner of their excavation:
• Material bought from antiquities dealers in the nineteenth and early twentieth cen-
tury and now largely held at the Louvre in Paris, the Oriental Institute in Chicago, the
Yale Babylonian Collection and the Vorderasiatische Museum in Berlin. No archaeological
context.
• Material excavated by German archaeologists in the early twentieth century and
now held in Istanbul and Berlin. Partial archaeological context. It is known that these
tablets were excavated at Uruk, but detailed findspot information is usually not available.
• Tablets excavated by German archaeologists from ca. 1960 onwards and now mainly
in Heidelberg and Baghdad. Detailed archaeological context including precise findspot
information.
Sometimes it is possible to reconstruct some archaeological context for tablets in the
first group because of the existence of physical joins with fragments from the second or
(very occasionally) third group. The existence of these joins indicates that some tablets
sold on the antiquities market leaked out of the early official excavations. This was not
uncommon at the time. For example, there are many joins between fragments of tablets
from Babylon bought by the British Museum and tablets that were excavated on British
Museum sponsored digs in the 1870s and 1880s.
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Figure 2. Plan of the site of Uruk (adapted from Jordan 1928: tafel 1).
3. Case Study I: the calendar
The calendar in use throughout Mesopotamia during the first millennium BC operated
as follows: months could have either 29 or 30 days determined by whether the new moon
was seen (or calculated to be seen) on the evening beginning the 30th day. If the moon
was seen (or calculated to be seen) then the current 30th day which was just beginning
would be renamed as the 1st day of the new month; if not, then the 30th day was allowed
to run its course and the following day would be the 1st day of the new month. This
rule is subtly different from saying that the month began on the evening of first crescent
visibility: only visibility on the evening of the beginning of the 30th day mattered. The
year normally contained twelve months but an intercalary thirteenth month was added
roughly every three years to keep the calendar in line with the seasons (Beaulieu 1993,
Britton 2007, Steele 2007, Steele 2011a, Stern 2008). Intercalary months could be added
either after the sixth or the twelfth month.
Probably around the end of the seventh century BC astronomers in Babylonia de-
veloped fairly accurate methods for predicting whether a month would have 29 or 30
days in advance. These methods made use of observations made 18 years earlier, and so
allowed the length of each month in a year to be predicted a year or more in advance
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(Brack-Bernsen 2002). I have argued elsewhere that at least in the period after about 300
BC, and quite possibly earlier, months in the Babylonian calendar was always calculated
in advance rather than relying upon direct observation of the new moon crescent (Steele
2007—for an alternate view, see Stern 2008). Beginning around the early 5th century,
intercalation was governed by a strict 19-year cycle. Thus, by the latter half of the first
millennium BC, it appears that the calendar in use throughout Babylonia was a calendar
determined by calculation. In other words, power over the calendar was transferred to
the astronomical scribes (Steele 2011a), though we do not know exactly which scribes
were charged with this task, whether, for example, this was purely the responsibility of
the astronomers in Babylon, or whether astronomers in other cities, such as Uruk, were
also involved.
The calendar was not just of interest to astronomers, of course, but played an important
role in Babylonian society (Steele 2011b). Throughout the year a busy and fixed calendar
of cultic activities was prescribed and enacted throughout Babylonia. This included the
important Akı̄tu or ‘New Year’ festival, which acted as a link between the people, the
king and the gods and lasted for several days at the beginning of the year, as well as
less spectacular, but still important, god-clothing and offering rituals within the temples.
Records of animal sacrifice within the temples of Uruk illustrate the importance of the
cultic calendar, providing evidence of a monthly pattern of sacrifice (Robbins 1996).
Having a calendar that was fixed in advance would have simplified the planning for
cultic activities and, perhaps crucially, ensured that activities were performed at the
same time throughout the empire. Indeed, these advantages may well have been the
reason for making the transition to an astronomically calculated, rather than a simple
observational, calendar (Steele 2011a, Steele 2011b). The astronomers in Uruk appear to
have played a role in maintaining the calendar and in distributing calendrical information
to nearby cities. The neighbouring town of Larsa, for example, appears to have relied
on information from Uruk for details of the calendar. Śameš-‘idrı̄, a high official of the
Ebabbar temple in Larsa, wrote to a šatammu official of the Eanna temple in Uruk noting
that he has heard the report that the previous month had only 29 days (the ‘turning
back’ of the 30th day):
Letter of Śameš-‘idrı̄ to the šatammu my father. May Šamaš and Bunene decree the
well-being and health of my father. We heard the report concerning the “turning back” of
the day. Šamaš will be clothed on the 15th day. May the lord send whatever (is needed)
on (that) day. May the lord (also) send a weaver and a cleaner.
[NCBT 58 trans. Beaulieu (1993: 77)]
The calendar provided one use of astronomy in Uruk through the very real needs of
cultic practice and administration.
4. Case Study II: Iqı̄šâ and the use of astronomy in astral medicine
Excavations of a house in the residential area to the south-east of the Eanna in Uruk
uncovered two archives of cuneiform tablets belonging to two different scribal families:
the descendants of Šangû-Ninurta and of Ekur-zākir (Pedersén 1998: 212–213, Robson
2008: 227–240). It appears that the Šangû-Ninurta family occupied the house during
the sixth and fifth centuries BC, leaving the house towards the end of the fifth century,
after which the Ekur-zākir family moved in. On leaving the house, the Šangû-Ninurta
family buried their tablets in clay jars, found at a lower stratigraphic level, but it is not
impossible that some tablets from the former owners were also incorporated within the
later library of the Ekur-zākir family. Many scholarly tablets are found in both libraries,
including many omen texts. Strictly astronomical texts, however, are only found in the
later library, primarily owned by a man named Iqı̄šâ.
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Iqı̄šâ was a mašmaššu priest (generally translated as ‘exorcist’) who worked for the
temples in Uruk in the late fourth century BC (Hunger 1971, Oelsner 2000). He owned
more than thirty scholarly tablets, including seven copied by his son Ištar-šuma-ēreš.
Their topics included omens, including several tablets from the standard celestial, terres-
trial and liver series, medical omens (both diagnostic and prognostic), tablets containing
astronomical observations, mathematical astronomy, and simple schematic astronomy
(e.g. tablets giving a simple function for the variation of the length of daylight over the
course of the year), and various astrological tablets.
Of particular interest among the astrological tablets owned by Iqı̄šâ are two so-called
‘kalendartexte’ tablets. These texts, which are known from both Babylon and Uruk,
link a numerical scheme with groups of things of cultic interest: the names of cities,
stones, animals etc. The numerical scheme associated days in the schematic calendar of
twelve 30-day months totalling 360 days with positions in the zodiac. Each day of the
year corresponds to a unique position in the zodiac (a non-trivial requirement of the
scheme) and positions for successive days are separated by 277◦ . Thus day 1 of Month I
is associated with 7◦ of Capricorn, day 2 with 4◦ of Libra, day 3 with 21◦ of Cancer, and
so on. Because the schematic calendar contains 360 days and the zodiac 360◦ , the mean
motion of the sun is 1◦ per day, implying in this simple model that the sun’s position in
the zodiac is equal to the day in the schematic calendar (assuming that at the beginning
of the year the sun is at the beginning of Aries). The parallelism between schematic
days and the sun’s position in the zodiac led to double meanings of a date or position,
and we find in some of the kalendartexte that month names and the names of zodiacal
signs may be juxtaposed. The daily motion of 277◦ used in the kalendartexte was derived
through the mathematical manipulation of a similar astrological scheme known as the
dodekatemoria which was itself based upon the assumption of mean lunar motion of 13◦
per day (Brack-Bernsen & Steele 2004).
The two kalendartexte owned by Iqı̄šâ each cover a single month: SpTU III 104 concerns
Month IV and SpTU III 105 Month VIII. These must have been part of a twelve-tablet
series, the remaining tablets of which have been lost. Alongside the numerical data both
tablets list animal parts (blood, fat, hair, etc) that are to be made into a mixture that
can be used in anointing an individual. A roughly contemporary astrological text from
Babylon explains that the kalendartexte are to be used to produce medical remedies:
For the animal(s) of 13 and 4,37 (=277) you take one with the other, you salve, feed,
and fumigate the patient with the stone, herb, and wood (respectively).
[LBAT 1593 trans. Reiner (2000)]
The ‘animals’ are the signs of the zodiac and the numbers 13 and 277 refer to the
dodekatemoria and kalendertexte schemes respectively. This text explains that the items
listed for each day (stone, herb, wood, or, in the present case, parts of animals) are to
be used to make the remedy for the patient.
Below I translate the first twelve lines of Iqı̄šâ’s kalendartexte for Month IV:
Month IV 1 Aries 7 Sheep-blood, sheep-fat, and sheep-hair, you anoint.
Ditto 2 Capricorn 14 Goat-bood, goat-fat, and goat-hair, you anoint.
Ditto 3 Libra 21 “Empty place”, you anoint.
Ditto 4 Cancer 28 Crab-blood, or crab-fat, ditto.
Ditto 5 Taurus 5 Bull-blood, or bull-fat, or bull-hair, ditto.
Ditto 6 Aquarius 12 Eagle-head, wing, and blood, ditto.
Ditto 7 Scorpio 19 “Empty place”, ditto.
Ditto 8 Leo 26 Lion-blood, lion-fat, or lion-hair, ditto.
Ditto 9 Gemini 3 Rooster-head, blood, and wing, ditto.
Ditto 10 Pisces 10 Dove-head, blood, swallow-head, blood, ditto.
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Ditto 11 Sagittarius 17 Anzu(-bird?)-head, Anzu(-bird?)-wing, Anzu(-bird)-blood,
ditto.
Ditto 12 Virgo 24 šigušu-barley-flour, raven-head, and raven-wing, ditto.
The format of the text is straightforward. In the first four columns we have the name of
the month, the day of the month and a position in the zodiac given by sign and degrees.
To the right of this data we find a list of (generally) three parts of an animal that are
to be used in anointing the patient. In one case (day 12), in addition to animal parts
we find a type of flour. In two other cases (day 3 and day 7) we find the phrase ‘empty
place’, which probably means that the tablet from which Iqı̄šâ made his copy was blank
at these points.
Throughout Iqı̄šâ’s kalendartexte the same ingredients are given whenever the zodiacal
sign produced by the kalendartexte scheme is the same (this pattern extends to Iqı̄šâ’s
other kalendartexte for Month VIII). For example, a position with the zodiacal sign
Aries lists sheep-blood, sheep-fat, and sheep-hair as the ingredients for the remedy, and
bull-blood, bull-fat, and bull-hair are listed whenever the zodiacal sign is Taurus. The
kalendartexte scheme is being used to determine which remedy is to be used each day. In
Table 1 I give the ingredients listed for each sign of the zodiac. In many cases, an obvious
and direct link can be seen between the sign of the zodiac and the animal to be used
(Steele 2006). For Cancer, generally written logographically in cuneiform with the sign
ALLA for the Akkadian word alluttu ‘crab’, parts of a crab are used. Similarly, for Leo,
written with the logogram A for the Akkadian word urgulû ‘lion’, parts of a lion are used,
and for Capricorn, written with the logogram MÁŠ for suhurmāšu ‘the goat-fish’, parts
of a goat are used. Where the zodiacal signs are not animals, nearby constellations are
used (Steele 2006). For example, the Babylonian sign Taurus is MÚL.MÚL ‘the stars’,
referring to the Pleiades. But close to the Pleiades is the constellation the ‘bull of heaven’,
and so the ingredients are taken from a bull.
The animals listed in Iqı̄šâ’s kalendartexte raise the question of whether and how
these texts were used in practice. Remedies made from parts of lions and eagles can
hardly have been widely available, and even using parts of bulls and goats would have
been prohibitively expensive for most Babylonians. Were these texts only of theoretical
interest, therefore, never intended to be used in the practice of medicine? It is perfectly
possible that this was the case, that these texts were no more than scholarly amusements
or texts used to show how erudite the owner of the tablet was. But I would like to
Table 1. Animals used to make the healing ingredients associated with
each zodiacal sign in Iqı̄šâ’s kalendartexte.
Zodiacal Sign Normal Babylonian Name Ingredient
Aries The Hired Man Sheep
Taurus The Stars (Pleiades) Bull
Gemini The Twin Rooster
Cancer The Crab Crab
Leo The Lion Lion
Virgo The Barleystalk Barley-flour, Raven
Libra The Balance “empty”
Scorpio The Scorpion “empty”
Sagittarius Pabilsag Anzu-bird
Capricorn The Goat-fish Goat
Aquarius The Great One Eagle
Pisces The Tails Dove, Swallow
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suggest an alternative hypothesis. There exists a tradition of Dreckapotheke in Babylonian
medicine where common plants or drugs are given other names in order to keep their
identification a secret within the medical community (Geller 2010: 53). Frequently these
names refer to unpleasant-sounding ingredients including human or animal excrement,
leper’s blood, and human semen. I suggest, therefore, that the names of the ingredients
given in Iqı̄šâ’s kalendartexte might also be Dreckapotheke, and refer to common or garden
herbs and plants, not to the animals themselves. For example, ‘lion’s blood’ is found in
Dreckapotheke lists to refer to the juice from the middle of the tamarisk (Geller 2010:
157). This would make Iqı̄šâ’s kalendartexte of practical use in medical practice.
Support for my interpretation of Iqı̄šâ’s kalendartexte comes from a partially preserved
medical commentary text written by Iqı̄šâ himself. MLC 1863, edited and translated
by Geller (2010: 166–173), is a commentary on a text discussing strokes. In his text
Iqı̄šâ links the plant amı̄lānu with a raven and the “single”-plant with a dove—both the
raven and the dove appear as ingredients in his kalendartexte. Other ingredients in the
kalendartexte appear in other lists of Dreckapotheke.
If my interpretation of Iqı̄šâ’s kalendartexte as incorporating Dreckapotheke is correct
it has an interesting consequence. The ingredients found in the kalendartexte are not
random—they are defined for each day by the kalendartexte scheme. In the context of
the kalendartexte, therefore, the Dreckapotheke names for the ingredients are not simply
secret code names for common plants or herbs, but themselves underpin the theory of
calendrical medicine found in the kalendartexte. In essence, the Dreckapotheke names
have acquired a reality themselves. The scholarly arguments used to justify the names
become for the scribe not his creation but his discovery of an underlying reality where
the amı̄lānu plant fundamentally is related to the raven, and where the multiple readings
of cuneiform signs really does tell us about the nature of the world.
Iqı̄šâ’s kalendartexte ends with a short colophon:
Tablet of Iqı̄šâ, firstborn son of Ištar-šuma-ēreš, descendant of Ekur-zākir, the mašmaššu
priest. (Hand of) Ištar-šuma-ēreš, his son. He who worships Anu, Enlil and Ea shall not
remove it.
Iqı̄šâ identifies himself as a mašmaššu priest. This title, probably synonymous with the
title āšipu (but see Geller 2010: 48–50), is generally translated as ‘exorcist’, a somewhat
problematical translation due to the connotations of the word in modern western usage.
In Mesopotamia, one important role of the exorcist was in medicine as it was believed
that many illnesses were caused by the presence of ghosts or other divine spirits within
a person’s body. Removal of these spirits required the patient participating in rituals,
often involving the consuming of prepared food or drink. Modern views of the division of
Mesopotamian medicine between the mašmaššu or āšipu and a physical healer called the
asǔ are probably overstated. Recent studies have instead emphasised the fluidity between
the two roles. Iqı̄šâ was a professional healer who used both spiritual and physical means
to assist his patients.
Looking at Iqı̄šâ’s archive of cuneiform tablets as a whole, we see a great interest in texts
dealing with medicine. It is therefore tempting to see Iqı̄šâ’s interest in astronomy as part
of his medical interests: the kalendartexte at least serve a medical purpose. Unfortunately,
we have insufficient evidence to know whether this extended to the rest of his astronomical
tablets. Perhaps they simply reflect the wider interests of an educated scholar. But as a
working hypothesis, I think it is worth considering that astral-medicine may have been
a significant interest of Iqı̄šâ, and it is worthwhile investigating further whether other
astronomical tablets among his archive could also have had a link with medicine.
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5. Case Study III: Anu-Bēlšunu and the use of astronomy in
astrology
Anu-Bēlšunu, a lamentation priest of the Bit-Reš sanctuary, was another prolific scholar
of Late Babylonian Uruk. We know that Anu-Bēlšunu lived from 249 BC to at least 185
BC. He was the son of a man named Nidintu-Anu and claimed to be a descendant of the
legendary scribe Sin-leqē-unninnı̄, who was said to be a scholar from the time of Gilgameš
(Beaulieu 2000, Pearce & Doty 2000, Steele 2000, Robson 2008: 240–260). The Sin-leqē-
unninnı̄ family had a long history of involvement in astronomy that can be traced back
to the sixth century BC when a group of lamentation priests of the Sin-leqē-unninnı̄
family were investigated by the temple authorities for the waste caused by a ceremony
occasioned by their prediction of a lunar eclipse which failed to occur on the day in
question (Beaulieu & Britton 1994).
Cuneiform tablets either owned or written by Anu-Bēlšunu are known from all three of
the groups I outlined in section 2 above: material bought from antiquities dealers, material
from the early German excavations, and material from the better documented German
excavations of the second half of the 20th century. In particular, several tablets were
excavated at the Bit-Reš during the 1959–60 season of the Deutsche Orient-Gesellshaft’s
work at the site. These tablets were not found inside the building but in what appears to
be a secondary context in the doorway to the complex. It has been suggested that these
tablets were first discovered during illicit tablet hunts at the beginning of the 20th century
and dropped as they were being removed from the site: there are certainly similarities
between this material and certain tablets now in the Louvre (Van Dijk & Mayer 1980).
Anu-Bēlšunu’s astronomical activity appears to have been concerned with two pri-
mary aspects: mathematical astronomy and astrology. In contrast to Iqı̄šâ, Anu-Bēlšunu
does not appear to have owned tablets containing observations. His astrological tablets
are all examples of what might be called ‘late astrology’—no tablets containing celestial
omens from the standard series Enūma Anu Enlil are known among his tablets. Instead
we find examples of kalendertexte and the famous illustrated astrological tablets that
link the moon, eclipses, the dodekatemoria scheme and various cultic items. In addi-
tion, Anu-Bēlšunu kept a copy of his own horoscope (Beaulieu & Rochberg 1996), and
owned a complication of planetary data that was computed using lunar and planetary
ephemerides (Steele 2000). This latter text is unusual in containing astronomical data
for each of the planets and the moon calculated by using mathematical astronomy. We
have no other examples of mathematical astronomy appearing outside of the mathemat-
ical astronomical texts themselves. The text is also unusual in containing astronomical
data calculated for an eleven-year period from years 60 to 70 of the Seleucid Era, but
having a colophon which explains that it was written in year 121 of the Seleucid Era. I
have argued elsewhere that this text was probably used in the preparation of horoscopes
(in support of this suggestion it is worth noting that Anu-Bēlšunu’s own horoscope falls
within the period covered by the calculations in the text) (Steele 2000).
The limited evidence that is provided by Anu-Bēlšunu’s preserved astronomical tablets
all points to the conclusion that an important part of Anu-Bēlšunu’s interest in astron-
omy was directed towards the construction of horoscopes. Observational records appear
to have been used only rarely to provide the astronomical data needed to cast a horo-
scope in the ancient world: Babylonian observations are not well suited to providing the
information needed for a Babylonian horoscope (planetary, lunar and solar longitudes
that would have to be obtained by interpolation from the infrequent records of planets
passing by stars typical of Babylonian observations). Mathematical astronomy, however,
provided the tools to compute the required information for a horoscope fairly easily
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https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1743921311012774340 J. M. Steele
(although, it should be noted, this information is not directly recorded in the ephemerides).
Anu-Bēlšunu’s interest in (and probably business of) constructing horoscopes may ex-
plain why he appears not to have been interested in observation.
6. Concluding remarks
My aim with the preceding case studies has been to show how the study of the wider
archival and cultural context of Babylonian astronomical texts can help understand both
the astronomy itself and its role within Babylonian society. By looking at evidence from
non-astronomical texts it has been possible to identify some of the uses astronomy had
in Babylonian society. These uses provided motivations for the study and development
of astronomy in Babylonia. However, I stress again that the uses I have identified here
are only some of the uses astronomy may have had, and provided only part of the moti-
vation for its practice. These can change over relatively short timeframes. For example,
there are both many similarities and certain clear differences between the practice (and
social context) of astronomy in Uruk during the third and fourth centuries BC and that
in the Neo-Assyrian empire during the seventh century BC. Furthermore, it is also ev-
ident that not all of Babylonian astronomy developed because of some practical need:
some Babylonian scholars clearly were interested in astronomy as an intellectual pursuit
(notwithstanding that the same individuals may also have had uses for their astron-
omy). Better understanding of these issues will only be possible by studying all aspects
of Babylonian astronomy—technical and cultural—together.
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